Jan. 14, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
07:12
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| So are you packing things up? | |
| Is that why you're in Strasbourg? | |
| I literally am, yes. | |
| The European Parliament has this funny thing where it travels to Strasbourg every month for a week in order to keep the French happy. | |
| So it has these two different places where it meets. | |
| I've got a couple of weeks to go in Brussels, but this is my last time here. | |
| So yes, I'm surrounded by packing boxes. | |
| But I tell you what, I mean, very rarely can someone have breathed a deeper sigh of relief on the day of his redundancy than I will on the 31st of January, because I see this as the beginning of a great period of global engagement for the UK. And in particular, I look forward to having a much closer commercial relationship with our allies in the United States, something we haven't been able to do because... | |
| When you're in the EU, Brussels controls all of your trade policy. | |
| The EU, for a bunch of reasons, didn't really want a proper free trade agreement with the United States. | |
| But we can rectify that. | |
| And I think a tie-up between the world's largest and fifth-largest economies is good news for everybody. | |
| By the way, I love your term, day of redundancy. | |
| I can think of so many people who should have such a day that it should become a formal matter. | |
| I think Nancy Pelosi has a day of redundancy. | |
| It's convinced me because I did have, you know, we just had a general election in the UK last month, and I wondered whether I should hop from the one parliament to the other. | |
| And I thought, you know, there's a reason why people came up with the idea of term limits. | |
| It's important not to get so... | |
| lose touch with what's happening in the rest of the world. | |
| Now, I've been 21 years in European Parliament, and I just thought I cannot in conscience deny that I was a keener and more energetic representative when I first started than I am after 20 years of pursuing the same routine. | |
| And I think this idea of making people do stuff in the private sector is good for them, as well as good for the countries. | |
| Well, it's a credit to you. | |
| I mean, it shows such a self-awareness. | |
| Do you see a trend, and then I'm coming actually to a part two before I would ask you to answer. | |
| I was just reading about the Taiwan election, and it was a massive, how could I put it without being vulgar, but a massive demonstration Of displeasure with the Beijing regime, which is remarkable given the size of Taiwan and the size of China. | |
| Then I look at Brazil. | |
| I look at the truly unpredicted, not just win, but massive win of Boris Johnson in your country. | |
| Of course, Donald Trump here. | |
| Then there's Hungary. | |
| Then there's Poland. | |
| And so here, it's a two-part question. | |
| Is there a trend? | |
| And what role do you believe Donald Trump, if any, has played in this trend? | |
| I think there is a trend. | |
| There's a movement away from the failures of an elite that had become remote and self-serving. | |
| And that reaction can take various forms, some of them more benign than others. | |
| I think it is understandable that people have reacted against what has become a sort of self-serving caste that has become cut off from the people it's supposed to represent. | |
| But we must make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease, right? | |
| In turning against a deracinated, internationalist, sneering political elite. | |
| We don't actually want to turn our backs on personal freedom, free trade, democracy, and all of the other things that have grown up over the last hundred years. | |
| And so I think actually Boris is probably the best example of someone who has been the beneficiary of an anti-politics mood, who has portrayed himself quite genuinely and successfully as the voice of Ordinary, | |
| decent, patriotic people against a failing political class, but who is within that a humane, open-minded, civilized man. | |
| There's no danger of him... | |
| Threatening to lock opponents up or changing the Constitution in the way that Orban has or whatever. | |
| And so I think, you know, we can identify the disease, but we've got to make sure that the prescription is proportionate to the diagnosis. | |
| Right. | |
| And so the part two, what role has Donald Trump played, if any? | |
| I mean, I'm conflicted, really, about Donald Trump. | |
| I didn't think it was a great choice at the last presidential election. | |
| I think of the two, I'd have held my nose and backed him. | |
| But I'd have done so well aware of the faults that come with him. | |
| And in particular, I think it's his indifference to due process when he happens to like the outcome. | |
| He is very ready to sideline Congress, to take an expansive interpretation of the powers of the presidency. | |
| And the people who objected when Obama did this need to ask very carefully whether they're okay when it happens to be someone from their team doing it, because on what grounds? | |
| Is a future leftist president going to be opposed if people haven't made their stand on due process, limitation of executive power, and defense of the prerogatives? | |
| What do you have in mind as an example? | |
| Is the assassination of Soleimani an example? | |
| You know, that one, just as in the Obama years, the argument about the legality breaks down totally predictably on partisan lines. | |
| But in a way, that's the point. | |
| I mean, the people, for example, who protested when Obama sidelined Congress in order to liberalize immigration policy, almost none of them complained when Trump tried to sideline Congress to tighten immigration policy. | |
| Now, either a president has that power or he doesn't. | |
| It's not okay when he uses that power because you happen to approve of what he's doing, but wrong when you happen to disapprove of it, right? | |
| The process when they like the outcome is depressing. | |
| All right. | |
| That's a great subject for a next time together. | |
| And unless you have time, because I was told you have a half hour and I keep to that. | |
| You're very kind. | |
| I've got an interview coming up. | |
| It is such a pleasure, as always, to talk to you, Dennis. | |
| Thank you for what you do. | |
| Yes, thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| It is a pleasure. |
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